1. Technical Field
The invention relates to nanotechnology. In particular, the invention relates to positioning catalyst nanoparticles for catalytic nanowire growth.
2. Description of Related Art
A consistent trend in semiconductor technology since its inception is toward smaller and smaller device dimensions and higher and higher device densities. As a result, an area of semiconductor technology that recently has seen explosive growth and generated considerable interest is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is concerned with the fabrication and application of so-called nano-scale structures, structures having at least one linear dimension between 1 nm and 200 nm. These nano-scale structures are often 5 to 100 times smaller than conventional semiconductor structures.
A nanowire is an example of a nano-scale structure. A nanowire is an individual quasi-one dimensional, nano-scale, single crystalline structure typically characterized as having two spatial dimensions or directions that are much less than a third spatial dimension or direction. The presence of the third, greater dimension in nanowires facilitates electron flow along that dimension while conduction is limited, and may be quantized, in the other two spatial dimensions.
Nanowires provide useful building blocks in making nano-scale devices. However, techniques for positioning nanowires in particular locations on surfaces in order to make nano-scale devices have not been one or more of reliable, reproducible or amenable to a manufacturing environment.